THIS is one of two of my favourite British films of the 1980s. One can only imagine what it must be like, as a seasoned hack following a story, to have one’s flat broken into and ransacked by those making the story, trying to eradicate any evidence of their guilt obtained by said hack though digging and research.
The film, made in a politically charged Britain when there was already a plethora of similar plots on our screens in the form of (amongst others) the TV serialisations of John Le Carré’s Smiley’s People and Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, was confirmation that the cold war was still very much in evidence, both in real and fictional terms. If a writer was short of a good plot he could always conjure up a cold war story to guarantee a keen audience. It would still be a while before the public would tire of the genre. A stellar cast further ensured the film’s appeal.
A prominent government official (Ian Bannen) involved in a sex scandal is suspected to be linked to a KGB agent. Gabriel Byrne in his first starring role plays Nick Mullen, a young reporter looking for the big story to get his career off the ground. He receives a tip-off that the MP’s misdemeanours are really a government cover-up for something much more serious. He has merely been made a scapegoat to distract from what is really going on. Despite warnings from his mentor and tired hack Vernon Bayliss (Denholm Elliot) Mullen charges in to get to the bottom of the story. Eventually Bayliss relents and teams up with Mullen and Nina Beckman (Greta Scacchi), the MP’s assistant, to discover the truth. In the course of their search they seriously endanger their lives. While Mullen and Beckman narrowly escape what could be grave consequences to their ‘digging’, Bayliss is found dead in his apartment after meeting with a government mole. It is also his flat which is searched during the team’s investigations.
Also starring as the reporters’ colleague at the newspaper office is Bill Patterson. Fulton Mackay plays the paper’s chief editor.
Defence of the Realm is thoughtfully shot to create atmosphere as well as showing the director’s obvious desire to preserve a sense of the time and history in which the film is set -- when newspaper offices were still cramped and seedy places and the typewriter and spiral notebook were a journalist’s tools of the trade. Some might feel the ending is a little unsatisfactory, but the film’s enduring quality nevertheless shines through brightly enough.14/01/07
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